TetraLogical
"Screen readers do not need to be saved by AI"
TetraLogical's @craigabbott has written a post on his own blog exploring why we shouldn’t expect screen readers to be augmented with AI to fix problems with bad content.
The real problem is producing inaccessible content from the start, such as misusing emojis, poor descriptions, or unclear writing.
https://www.craigabbott.co.uk/blog/screen-readers-do-not-need-saved-by-ai/
Brodie Robertson
@TetraLogical @craigabbott As much as I appreciate the sentiment you're never going to make progress in getting people to write text that is cleanly readable by a screenreader, this is just a losing battle. I think it's far more productive to spend time in trying to make reality work for a screen reader than trying to convince people to change.
Brodie Robertson
@TetraLogical @craigabbott This is a separate problem from clean website design, that is an area where you legitimately can make progress and encourage best practice design so as to not break software for no reason. But social media comments will always be something you have to find a way to work around
Brodie Robertson
@TetraLogical @craigabbott What I do think has value is augmenting how symbols are handled within a screen reader, rather than just simply reading the name of it, understanding how these symbols are used and providing audio queues through this tooling.
Brodie Robertson
@glyph @craigabbott @matt @TetraLogical This isn't just an English problem, people are always going to develop weird shorthands that need to be accounted for, take 草 in Japanese for example. This is the kanji for grass but in online discourse is used to represent laughing, and this has some what bled out into anime spaces in English speaking countries. Trying to smooth out communication like this I don't think is a path that's going to lead anywhere productive.
Glyph
@craigabbott @matt @TetraLogical I think that teaching about accessibility generally is a great idea and one we should push for, but I also think that "please memorize the 10 most salient implementation deficiencies of the 5 most popular commercial screen-reader systems" is like the worst possible place to start developing that curriculum
Glyph
@matt @TetraLogical @craigabbott I really feel like this insistence that people not add "fun" expressions to their language is never, ever going to be a viable strategy for addressing accessibility more broadly. Gen alpha slackers attempting to use indecipherable emoji algospeak to impress their friends or evade algorithmic filters in their Instagram posts are not going to be persuaded to read a 216-page $30 book before they write anything.
Craig Abbott
@glyph @matt @TetraLogical you’re right, people aren’t going to randomly just pick up a book and read about it. But, I think education is a key part to all of this. I just think it needs to be taught it earlier, in things like key skills communications, and computer science curriculums. Accessibility doesn’t get taught during those formative years, where it would likely have the most impact. We’re trying to re-teach every new generation retrospectively.
Matt Campbell
@TetraLogical @craigabbott As a former screen reader developer myself, I mostly agree with this article. But, for the specific exzample of the clapping hands emoji, I think it would be easy enough to add a special case to the screen reader -- not "AI", but just a good old hand-coded heuristic -- to filter the text and then play a clapping-hands sound effect synchronized with each of the words. I just wonder if there's broad consistency on whether the emoji comes before or after the word.
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